Saturday, May 31, 2008

USA Military Officers Challenge Official Account of September 11 Thursday, 22 May 2008 10:15 Pakistan Daily

Twenty-five former U.S. military officers have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and called for a new investigation. They include former commander of U.S. Army Intelligence, Major General Albert Stubblebine, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Col. Ronald D. Ray, two former staff members of the Director of the National Security Agency; Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, and Major John M. Newman, PhD, and many others. They are among the rapidly growing number of military and intelligence service veterans, scientists, engineers, and architects challenging the government’s story. The officers’ statements appear below, listed alphabetically.

Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD “A lot of these pieces of information, taken together, prove that the official story, the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is a bunch of hogwash. It’s impossible,” said Lt. Col. Robert Bowman, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret). With doctoral degrees in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering, Col. Bowman served as Director of Advanced Space Programs Development under Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

“There’s a second group of facts having to do with the cover up,” continued Col. Bowman. “Taken together these things prove that high levels of our government don’t want us to know what happened and who’s responsible. Who gained from 9/11? Who covered up crucial information about 9/11? And who put out the patently false stories about 9/11 in the first place? When you take those three things together, I think the case is pretty clear that it’s highly placed individuals in the administration with all roads passing through Dick Cheney.”

Regarding the failure of NORAD to intercept the four hijacked planes on 9/11, Col. Bowman said, “I'm an old interceptor pilot. I know the drill. I've done it. I know how long it takes. I know the rules. … Critics of the government story on 9/11 have said: ‘Well, they knew about this, and they did nothing’. That's not true. If our government had done nothing that day and let normal procedure be followed, those planes, wherever they were, would have been intercepted, the Twin Towers would still be standing and thousands of dead Americans would still be alive.”

During his 22-year Air Force career, Col. Bowman also served as the Head of the Department of Aeronautical Engineering and Assistant Dean at the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology. He also flew over 100 combat missions in Viet Nam as a fighter pilot.

Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom Former U.S. Air Force pilot Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom wrote in a 2007 statement to this author, “When 9/11 occurred I bought the entire government and mainstream media story line. I was a lifelong conservative Republican that voted for Bush/Cheney, twice. Curiosity about JFK’s death, after a late night TV re-run of Oliver Stone’s movie, got me started researching and digging for the truth about his assassins.

“My research led me to a much more important and timely question: the mystery of what really did happen on 9/11. Everything that seemed real, turned out to be false. The US government and the news media, once again, were lying to the world about the real terrorists and the public murder of 2,972 innocents on 9/11.“The ‘Patriot Act’ was actually written prior to 9/11 with the intention of destroying the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. It was passed by Congress, based upon the government's myth of 9/11, which was in reality a staged hoax. 9/11 was scripted and executed by rogue elements of the military, FAA, intelligence, and private contractors working for the US government.

“In addition to severely curtailing fundamental rights of Americans, the 9/11 crime was then used by this administration, the one I originally voted for and supported, to justify waging two preemptive wars (and most likely a third war), killing over 4,500 American soldiers, and killing over one million innocent Afghan and Iraqi people.

“It was all premeditated. Treason, a false flag military operation, and betrayal of the trust of the American people were committed on 9/11 by the highest levels of the US government and not one person responsible for the crimes, or the cover-up, has been held accountable for the last six years.

“After reading fifteen well-researched books, studying eight or nine DVD documentaries, and devoting months of personal research and investigation, I have arrived at one ultimate conclusion: The American government and the US Constitution have been hijacked and subverted by a group of criminals that today are the real terrorists. They are in control of the US government and they have all violated their oaths of office and committed treason against their own citizens.”

Capt. Daniel Davis Capt. Daniel Davis is a former U.S. Army Air Defense Officer and NORAD Tac Director. After his military service, Capt. Davis served for 15 years as a Senior Manager at General Electric Turbine (jet) Engine Division and then devoted an additional 15 years as founder and CEO of Turbine Technology Services Corp., a turbine (jet engine) services and maintenance company.

In a statement to this author, Capt. Davis wrote, “As a former General Electric Turbine engineering specialist and manager and then CEO of a turbine engineering company, I can guarantee that none of the high tech, high temperature alloy engines on any of the four planes that crashed on 9/11 would be completely destroyed, burned, shattered or melted in any crash or fire. Wrecked, yes, but not destroyed. Where are all of those engines, particularly at the Pentagon? If jet powered aircraft crashed on 9/11, those engines, plus wings and tail assembly, would be there.”Decorated with the Bronze Star and the Soldiers Medal for bravery under fire and the Purple Heart for injuries sustained in Viet Nam, Capt. Davis also served in the Army Air Defense Command as Nike Missile Battery Control Officer for the Chicago-Milwaukee Defense Area.

Capt. Davis continued, “Additionally, in my experience as an officer in NORAD as a Tactical Director for the Chicago-Milwaukee Air Defense and as a current private pilot, there is no way that an aircraft on instrument flight plans (all commercial flights are IFR) would not be intercepted when they deviate from their flight plan, turn off their transponders, or stop communication with Air Traffic Control. No way! With very bad luck, perhaps one could slip by, but no there's no way all four of them could!

“Finally, going over the hill and highway and crashing into the Pentagon right at the wall/ground interface is difficult for even a small slow single engine airplane and no way for a 757. Maybe the best pilot in the world could accomplish that but not these unskilled ‘terrorists’. Attempts to obscure facts by calling them a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ does not change the truth. It seems, ‘Something is rotten in the State’.”

Major Jon I. Fox is a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot and a retired commercial airline pilot for Continental Airlines with a 35-year commercial aviation career. In 2007, in support of the Architects and Engineers[3] petition to reinvestigate 9/11, he wrote, “On hearing the military (NORAD/NEAD) excuses for no intercepts on 9/11/2001, I knew from personal experience that they were lying. I then began re-checking other evidence and found mostly more lies from the ‘official spokesmen’. Jet fuel fires at atmospheric pressure do not get hot enough to weaken steel. Structures do not collapse through themselves in free fall time with only gravity as the powering force.”

Commander Ralph Kolstad Retired U.S. Navy ‘Top Gun’ pilot Commander Ralph Kolstad started questioning the official account of 9/11 within days of the event. In a statement to this author, he wrote, “It just didn’t make any sense to me,” he said. And now six years after 9/11 he says, “When one starts using his own mind, and not what one was told, there is very little to believe in the official story.”

Commander Kolstad was a top-rated fighter pilot during his 20-year Navy career. Early in his career, he was accorded the honor of being selected to participate in the Navy’s ‘Top Gun’ air combat school, officially known as the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School. The Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun” reflects the experience of the young Navy pilots at the school. Eleven years later, Commander Kolstad was further honored by being selected to become a ‘Top Gun’ adversary instructor.Commander Kolstad had a second career after his 20 years of Navy active and reserve service and served as a commercial airline pilot for 27 years, flying for American Airlines and other domestic and international careers. He flew Boeing 727, 757 and 767, McDonnell Douglas MD-80, and Fokker F-100 airliners. He has flown a total of over 23,000 hours in his career.

Commander Kolstad is especially critical of the account of American Airlines Flight 77 that allegedly crashed into the Pentagon. He says, “At the Pentagon, the pilot of the Boeing 757 did quite a feat of flying. I have 6,000 hours of flight time in Boeing 757’s and 767’s and I could not have flown it the way the flight path was described.”

Commander Kolstad adds, “I was also a Navy fighter pilot and Air Combat Instructor and have experience flying low altitude, high speed aircraft. I could not have done what these beginners did. Something stinks to high heaven!”

He points to the physical evidence at the Pentagon impact site and asks in exasperation, “Where is the damage to the wall of the Pentagon from the wings? Where are the big pieces that always break away in an accident? Where is all the luggage? Where are the miles and miles of wire, cable, and lines that are part and parcel of any large aircraft? Where are the steel engine parts? Where is the steel landing gear? Where is the tail section that would have broken into large pieces?”

But no major element of the official account of 9/11 is spared from Commander Kolstad’s criticism. Regarding the alleged impact site of United Airlines Flight 93 near Shanksville, PA, he asks, “Where is any of the wreckage? Of all the pictures I have seen, there is only a hole! Where is any piece of a crashed airplane? Why was the area cordoned off, and no inspection allowed by the normal accident personnel? Where is any evidence at all?”

Commander Kolstad also questions many aspects of the attack on the World Trade Center. “How could a steel and concrete building collapse after being hit by a Boeing 767? Didn’t the engineers design it to withstand a direct hit from a Boeing 707, approximately the same size and weight of the 767? The evidence just doesn’t add up.”

“Why did the second building collapse before the first one, which had been burning for 20 minutes longer after a direct hit, especially when the second one hit was just a glancing blow? If the fire was so hot, then why were people looking out the windows and in the destroyed areas? Why have so many members of the New York Fire Department reported seeing or hearing many ‘explosions’ before the buildings collapsed?”

Commander Kolstad summarized his frustration with the investigation and disbelief of the official account of 9/11, “If one were to act as an accident investigator, one would look at the evidence, and then construct a plausible scenario as to what led to the accident. In this case, we were told the story and then the evidence was built to support the story. What happened to any intelligent investigation? Every question leads to another question that has not been answered by anyone in authority. This is just the beginning as to why I don’t believe the official ‘story’ and why I want the truth to be told.”

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski A Pentagon eye-witness and a former member of the staff of the Director of the National Security Agency, Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, PhD, U.S. Air Force (ret), is a severe critic of the official account of 9/11. A contributing author to the 2006 book 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, she wrote, “I believe the [9/11] Commission failed to deeply examine the topic at hand, failed to apply scientific rigor to its assessment of events leading up to and including 9/11, failed to produce a believable and unbiased summary of what happened, failed to fully examine why it happened, and even failed to include a set of unanswered questions for future research.”

She continued, “It is as a scientist that I have the most trouble with the official government conspiracy theory, mainly because it does not satisfy the rules of probability or physics. The collapses of the World Trade Center buildings clearly violate the laws of probability and physics.”Col. Kwiatkowski was working in the Pentagon on 9/11 in her capacity as Political-Military Affairs Officer in the Office of the Secretary of Defense when Flight 77 allegedly hit the Pentagon. She wrote, “There was a dearth of visible debris on the relatively unmarked lawn, where I stood only minutes after the impact. Beyond this strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the Secretary of Defense [Donald Rumsfeld], who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a ‘missile.’ [Secretary Rumsfeld also publicly referred to Flight 93 as the plane that was "shot down" over Pennsylvania.]

“I saw nothing of significance at the point of impact - no airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn in front of the damaged building as smoke billowed from within the Pentagon. ... [A]ll of us staring at the Pentagon that morning were indeed looking for such debris, but what we expected to see was not evident.

“The same is true with regard to the kind of damage we expected. ... But I did not see this kind of damage. Rather, the facade had a rather small hole, no larger than 20 feet in diameter. Although this facade later collapsed, it remained standing for 30 or 40 minutes, with the roof line remaining relatively straight.

“The scene, in short, was not what I would have expected from a strike by a large jetliner. It was, however, exactly what one would expect if a missile had struck the Pentagon. ... More information is certainly needed regarding the events of 9/11 and the events leading up to that terrible day.”

The improbability of the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 is a major concern of these officers and a growing number of scientists, engineers and architects. The building was 610 feet tall, 47 stories, and would have been the tallest building in 33 states. Although it was not hit by an airplane, it completely collapsed into a pile of rubble in less than 7 seconds at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11. In the 6 years since 9/11, the Federal government has failed to provide any explanation for the collapse. In addition to the failure to provide an explanation, absolutely no mention of Building 7’s collapse appears in the 9/11 Commission's “full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.”

Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford Lt. Col. Shelton Lankford, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), an attack pilot with over 300 combat missions, wrote in 2007 to the Michigan Daily, “Our government has been hijacked by means of a ‘new Pearl Harbor’ and a lot of otherwise good and decent people who are gullible enough to think that the first three steel-framed buildings in history fall down because they have some fires that the fire fighter on the scene said could be knocked down with a couple of hoses and through which people walked before they were photographed looking out the holes where the plane hit. One of these, Building 7, was never hit by a plane and even NIST is ashamed to advance a reason for its collapse. And, miracle of miracles, these three buildings just happened to be leased and insured by the same guy who is on tape saying they decided to ‘PULL’ the last one to fall.”During his 20 year military career, Col. Lankford's decorations include the Distinguished Flying Cross, and 32 awards of the Air Medal.

In a statement to this author, Col. Lankford wrote, “September 11, 2001 seems destined to be the watershed event of our lives and the greatest test for our democracy in our lifetimes. The evidence of government complicity in the lead-up to the events, the failure to respond during the event, and the astounding lack of any meaningful investigation afterwards, as well as the ignoring of evidence turned up by others that renders the official explanation impossible, may signal the end of the American experiment. It has been used to justify all manners of measures to legalize repression at home and as a pretext for behaving as an aggressive empire abroad. Until we demand an independent, honest, and thorough investigation and accountability for those whose action and inaction led to those events and the cover-up, our republic and our Constitution remain in the gravest danger.”

Lt. Col. Jeff Latas Another harsh critic of the official account of 9/11 is Lt. Col. Jeff Latas, U.S. Air Force (ret). A former combat fighter pilot, Col. Latas is currently a commercial airline pilot.

Col. Latas is a member of Pilots for 9/11 Truth. In 2007 he was interviewed by the group’s founder, commercial airline pilot, Rob Balsamo, regarding the group’s documentary video, Pandora's Black Box, Chapter 2, Flight of American 77, which focuses on the 9/11 Commission's account of the impact of Flight 77 at the Pentagon and discrepancies with the data from the Flight Data Recorder alleged by the NTSB to be from Flight 77.In the interview, Col. Latas said, “After I did my own analysis of it, it's obvious that there's discrepancies between the two stories; between the 9/11 Commission and the flight data recorder information. And I think that's where we really need to focus a lot of our attention to get the help that we need in order to put pressure on government agencies to actually do a real investigation of 9/11. And not just from a security standpoint, but from even an aviation standpoint, like any accident investigation would actually help the aviators out by finding reasons for things happening.”

A highly decorated fighter pilot, Col. Latas was awarded the Distinguish Flying Cross for Heroism, four Air Medals, four Meritorious Service Medals, and nine Aerial Achievement Medals. His combat experience includes Desert Storm and four tours of duty in Northern and Southern Watch. During his 20-year Air Force career, he also served as Pentagon Weapons Requirement Officer, as a member of the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, and as President, U.S. Air Force Accident Investigation Board.

Col. Latas concluded, “And I think that we Americans need to demand further investigation just to clarify the discrepancies that you've [Pilots for 9/11 Truth] found. And I think that we need to be getting on the phone with our Congressmen and women and letting them know that we don't accept the excuses that we're hearing now, that we want true investigators to do a true investigation.”

Capt. Eric H. May

Commander Ted Muga

Capt. Eric H. May, U.S. Army (ret), is a former Army Intelligence Officer who also served as an inspector and interpreter for the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty team. He is one of many signers of a petition requesting a reinvestigation of 9/11. In 2005, he wrote: “As a former Army officer, my tendency immediately after 911 was to rally 'round the colors and defend the country against what I then thought was an insidious, malicious all-Arab entity called Al-Qaida. In fact, in April of 2002, I attempted to reactivate my then-retired commission to return to serve my country in its time of peril. ...

Now I view the 911 event as Professor David Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor, views it: as a matter that implies either

A) passive participation by the Bush White House through a deliberate stand-down of proper defense procedures that (if followed) would have led US air assets to a quick identification and confrontation of the passenger aircraft that impacted WTC 1 and WTC 2, or worse ...

B) active execution of a plot by rogue elements of government, starting with the White House itself, in creating a spectacle of destruction that would lead the United States into an invasion of the Middle East ...”

Commander Ted Muga, U.S. Navy (ret), is a Navy aviator, who, after retirement, had a second career as a commercial airline pilot for Pan-Am.In a 2007 interview on the Alex Jones Show, Commander Muga stated, “The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training. In other words, commercial aircraft are designed for a particular purpose and that is for comfort and for passengers and it's not for military maneuvers. And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that. ... I just can't imagine an amateur even being able to come close to performing a maneuver of that nature.“And as far as hijacking the airplanes, once again getting back to the nature of pilots and airplanes, there is no way that a pilot would give up an airplane to hijackers. ... I mean, hell, a guy doesn't give up a TV remote control much less a complicated 757. And so to think that pilots would allow a plane to be taken over by a couple of 5 foot 7, 150 pound guys with a one-inch blade boxcutter is ridiculous.

“And also in all four planes, if you remember, none of the planes ever switched on their transponder to the hijack code. There's a very, very simple code that you put in if you suspect that your plane is being hijacked. It takes literally just a split-second for you to put your hand down on the center console and flip it over. And not one of the four planes ever transponded a hijack code, which is most, most unusual. ...

“Commercial airplanes are very, very complex pieces of machines. And they're designed for two pilots up there, not just two amateur pilots, but two qualified commercial pilots up there. And to think that you're going to get an amateur up into the cockpit and fly, much less navigate, it to a designated target, the probability is so low, that it's bordering on impossible.”

Col. George Nelson

“In all my years of direct and indirect participation, I never witnessed nor even heard of an aircraft loss, where the wreckage was accessible, that prevented investigators from finding enough hard evidence to positively identify the make, model, and specific registration number of the aircraft -- and in most cases the precise cause of the accident,” wrote Col. George Nelson, MBA, U.S. Air Force (ret), a former U.S. Air Force aircraft accident investigator and airplane parts authority.

“The government alleges that four wide-body airliners crashed on the morning of September 11 2001, resulting in the deaths of more than 3,000 human beings, yet not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view,” continued Col. Nelson, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force War College and a 34-year Air Force veteran.“With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon as alleged. Similarly, with all the evidence available at the Pennsylvania crash site, it was most doubtful that a passenger airliner caused the obvious hole in the ground and certainly not the Boeing 757 as alleged. …

“As painful and heartbreaking as was the loss of innocent lives and the lingering health problems of thousands more, a most troublesome and nightmarish probability remains that so many Americans appear to be involved in the most heinous conspiracy in our country's history.”

Maj. John M. Newman, PhD

Capt. Omar Pradhan

Col. Ronald D. Ray Maj. John M. Newman, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), is the former Executive Assistant to the Director of the National Security Agency. In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing, he said, “It falls to me this morning to bring to your attention the story of Saeed Sheikh, whose full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and his astonishing rise to power in Al Qaeda, his crucial role in 9/11, which is completely, utterly, missing from the 9/11 Commission report…

“The 9/11 Commission which studied US intelligence and law enforcement community performance in great detail, (maybe not so much great detail, but they did), neglected to cover the community’s performance during the weeks following the attacks to determine who was responsible for them, not a word about that in the Report.

“The Report does discuss the immediate US responses but the immediate investigation is never addressed, and anyone who has closely studied the post-9/11 investigation knows that the first breakthrough came two weeks into the investigation when the money transfers from the United Arab Emirates to the hijackers were uncovered.

“Furthermore, if you have studied that investigation, you know there is no disputing that while investigators may have struggled with the identity of the paymaster, they were clear about one thing, he was Al Qaeda’s finance chief. For this reason alone you have to ask why the 9/11 Commission Report never mentions the finance chief’s role as the 9/11 paymaster.”

Capt. Omar Pradhan, U.S. Air Force, is a former AWACS command pilot and Flight Instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy. In a 2007 statement to this author, Capt. Pradhan wrote, “As a proud American, as a distinguished USAF E-3 AWACS Aircraft Commander (with 350+ hours of combat time logged over Afghanistan and Iraq), and as a former U.S. Air Force Academy Flight Instructor, I warmly endorse the professional inquiry and pursuit of comprehensive truth sought by the Pilots for 911 Truth organization and the PatriotsQuestion911 website.”

Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ronald D. Ray, U.S. Marine Corps (ret), Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan. A highly decorated Vietnam veteran (two Silver Stars, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart), he was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the American Battle Monuments Commission (1990 – 1994), and the 1992 Presidential Commission on the Assignment of Women in the Armed Forces. He was Military Historian and Deputy Director of Field Operations for the U.S. Marine Corps Historical Center, Washington, D.C. (1990 – 1994).

In an interview on Alex Jones’ radio show on June 30, 2006, Col. Ray described the official account of 9/11 as “the dog that doesn’t hunt”, meaning it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In response to Alex Jones’ question, “Is it safe to say or is the statement accurate that you smell something rotten in the state of Denmark when it comes to 9/11?” Col. Ray replied,“I'm astounded that the conspiracy theory advanced by the administration could in fact be true and the evidence does not seem to suggest that that's accurate. That's true.”“After 4+ years of research since retirement in 2002, I am 100% convinced that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were planned, organized, and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government. It is now time to take our country back,” wrote Lt. Col. Guy S. Razer, MS, U.S. Air Force (ret), in a statement to this author.

A retired fighter pilot, Col. Razer served as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School and NATO’s Tactical Leadership Program and flew combat missions over Iraq. He continued, “The ‘collapse’ of WTC Building 7 shows beyond any doubt that the demolitions were pre-planned. There is simply no way to demolish a 47-story building (on fire) over a coffee break. It is also impossible to report the building’s collapse before it happened, as BBC News did, unless it was pre-planned. Further damning evidence is Larry Silverstein's video taped confession in which he states ‘they made that decision to pull [WTC 7] and we watched the building collapse.’

“We cannot let the pursuit of justice fail. Those of us in the military took an oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’. Just because we have retired does not make that oath invalid, so it is not just our responsibility, it is our duty to expose the real perpetrators of 9/11 and bring them to justice, no matter how hard it is, how long it takes, or how much we have to suffer to do it,” he concluded.

Maj. Scott Ritter

Maj. Douglas Rokke, PhD

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer

Maj. Scott Ritter, U.S. Marine Corps, is a former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer who also served as Chief Weapons Inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq 1991 - 1998. In 2005, he said: “I, like the others, are frustrated by the 9/11 Commission Report, by the lack of transparency on the part of the United States government, both in terms of the executive branch and the legislative branch when it comes to putting out on the table all facts known to the 9/11 case.”

Maj. Douglas Rokke, PhD, U.S. Army (ret), former Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Project and 30-year veteran, had this to say about the explosion at the Pentagon on 9/11, “When you look at the whole thing, especially the crash site void of airplane parts, the size of the hole left in the building and the fact the projectile's impact penetrated numerous concrete walls, it looks like the work of a missile. And when you look at the damage, it was obviously a missile.”

The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that only three of the alleged hijackers were known to U.S. intelligence agencies prior to 9/11: Nawaf al-Hazmi, Salem al-Hazmi, and Khalid al-Mihdar. There is no mention in the Report that the names and photographs of alleged hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi and alleged ring-leader Mohamed Atta had been identified by the Department of Defense anti-terrorist program known as Able Danger more than a year prior to 9/11 and that they were known to be affiliates of al-Qaida. Able Danger also identified Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdar.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee in 2006, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, U.S. Army Reserve, former Chief of the Army’s Controlled HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Program, overseeing Army Intelligence and Security Command’s global controlled HUMINT efforts, stated: “[B]asic law enforcement investigative techniques, with 21st Century data mining and analytical tools ... resulted in the establishment of a new form of intelligence collection – and the identification of Mohammed Atta and several other of the 9-11 terrorists as having links to Al Qaeda leadership a full year in advance of the attacks. ...

“After contact by two separate members of the ABLE DANGER team, … the 9-11 [Commission] staff refused to perform any in-depth review or investigation of the issues that were identified to them. … It was their job to do a thorough investigation of these claims – to not simply dismiss them based on what many now believe was a ‘preconceived’ conclusion to the 9-11 story they wished to tell. … I consider this a failure of the 9-11 staff – a failure that the 9-11 Commissioners themselves were victimized by – and continue to have perpetrated on them by the staff as is evidenced by their recent, groundless conclusion that ABLE DANGER’s findings were ‘urban legend’.” A 23-year military intelligence veteran, Col. Shaffer was recently awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in Afghanistan. In a 2005 interview on Fox News, Col Shaffer asked, “Why did this operation, which was created in '99 to target Al Qaeda globally, offensively, why was that turned off in the Spring of 2001, four months before we were attacked? I can't answer that, either. I can tell you I was ordered out of the operation directly by a two-star general.”

Supporting Col. Shaffer’s statement, Capt. Scott J. Phillpott, U.S. Navy, currently Commanding Officer of the guided-missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and former head of the Able Danger data mining program, stated in 2005: “I will not discuss this outside of my chain of command. I have briefed the Department of the Army, the Special Operations Command and the office of (Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence) Dr. Cambone as well as the 9/11 Commission. My story has remained consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger in January/February 2000.” Capt. Phillpott is a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, who during his 23 years of Navy service has been awarded the Legion of Merit, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, three Meritorious Service Medals, the Joint Service Commendation Medal, two Navy Commendation Medals, and the Navy Achievement Medal.

Joel Skousen

Gen. Albert Stubblebine Former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot Joel M. Skousen also questions the official account of 9/11. After his military service, Mr. Skousen served as Chairman of the Conservative National Committee in Washington DC and Executive Editor of Conservative Digest.

“In the March 2005 issue, PM [Popular Mechanics] magazine singled out 16 issues or claims of the 9/11 skeptics that point to government collusion and systematically attempted to debunk each one. Of the 16, most missed the mark and almost half were straw men arguments - either ridiculous arguments that few conspiracists believed or restatements of the arguments that were highly distorted so as to make them look weaker than they really were. ...

“I am one of those who claim there are factual arguments pointing to conspiracy, and that truth is not served by taking cheap shots at those who see gaping flaws in the government story ... There is significant evidence that the aircraft impacts did not cause the collapse [of the Twin Towers] ...

The issues of the penetration hole [at the Pentagon] and the lack of large pieces of debris simply do not jive with the official story, but they are explainable if you include the parking lot video evidence that shows a huge white explosion at impact. This cannot happen with an aircraft laden only with fuel. It can only happen in the presence of high explosives.”

Major General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army (ret), former Commanding General of U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), is a strong critic of the official account of 9/11. In a 2006 video documentary he said, “One of my experiences in the Army was being in charge of the Army’s Imagery Interpretation for Scientific and Technical Intelligence during the Cold War. I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job. I look at the hole in the Pentagon and I look at the size of an airplane that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon. And I said, ‘The plane does not fit in that hole’. So what did hit the Pentagon? What hit it? Where is it? What's going on?”

During his 32-year Army career, Gen. Stubblebine also commanded the U.S. Army’s Electronic Research and Development Command and the U.S. Army’s Intelligence School and Center. Gen. Stubblebine is one of the inductees into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame. “There is a well-organized cover-up of the events of 11 Sep 2001. The 9/11 Commission was a white-washed farce. There is evidence that US Government officials had advance knowledge of and are probably implicated in the events of 9/11,” wrote retired military physician, Col. James R. Uhl, MD, U.S. Army (ret), in a statement to this author.

“A huge body of physical evidence has been ignored, suppressed, and ridiculed by the media and by our Government. Why did WTC 7 collapse? It was never hit by an airplane and was apparently brought down by explosives. How could Al-Qaida terrorists have had access and time to plant bombs in a top secret installation? Why did the 9/11 Commission fail to seek the reason for the WTC 7 collapse?” continued Col. Uhl, a 38-year Army veteran, who served in several theaters of operations, from Viet Nam through Iraq.

Capt. Russ Wittenberg Capt. Russ Wittenberg, U.S. Air Force, is a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot with over 100 combat missions and a retired commercial pilot, who flew for Pan Am and United Airlines for 35 years.

According to Capt. Wittenberg, “The government story they handed us about 9/11 is total B.S., plain and simple.

In the 2007 documentary video, 9/11 Ripple Effect,he said “I flew the two actual aircraft which were involved in 9/11; the Fight number 175 and Flight 93, the 757 that allegedly went down in Shanksville and Flight 175 is the aircraft that's alleged to have hit the South Tower.“I don't believe it's possible for, like I said, for a terrorist, a so-called terrorist, to train on a [Cessna] 172, then jump in a cockpit of a 757-767 class cockpit, and vertical navigate the aircraft, lateral navigate the aircraft, and fly the airplane at speeds exceeding its design limit speed by well over 100 knots, make high-speed high-banked turns, exceeding -- pulling probably 5, 6, 7 G's. And the aircraft would literally fall out of the sky. I couldn't do it and I'm absolutely positive they couldn't do it.” Regarding Flight 77, which allegedly hit the Pentagon, Capt. Wittenberg said, ”The airplane could not have flown at those speeds which they said it did without going into what they call a high speed stall. The airplane won’t go that fast if you start pulling those high G maneuvers at those bank angles. … To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ludicrous ... It’s roughly a 100 ton airplane. And an airplane that weighs 100 tons all assembled is still going to have 100 tons of disassembled trash and parts after it hits a building. There was no wreckage from a 757 at the Pentagon. … The vehicle that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77. We think, as you may have heard before, it was a cruise missile.”

Col. Ann Wright

Capt. Gregory Zeigler Another senior officer questioning the official account of 9/11 is Col. Ann Wright, U.S. Army (ret), who said in a 2007 interview with Richard Greene on the Air America Radio Network, “It's incredible some of these things that still are unanswered. The 9/11 Report -- that was totally inadequate. I mean the questions that anybody has after reading that.”

Col. Wright is one of three U.S. State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003. She served for 13 years on active duty and 16 additional years on reserve duty in the U.S. Army. She joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and served for 16 years as a U.S. Diplomat. She served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassies in Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Afghanistan and she helped reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kabul in December, 2001.

She continued in her interview: “How could our national intelligence and defense operations be so inept that they could not communicate; that they could not scramble jets; that they could not take defensive action? And I totally agree. I always thought the Pentagon had all sorts of air defense sort of equipment around it; that they could take out anything that was coming at it. And for a plane to be able to just fly low right over Washington and slam into that thing is just -- I mean, you still just shake your head. How in the world could that happen?”

Capt. Gregory M. Zeigler, PhD, is a former U.S. Army Intelligence Officer. In a 2006 statement to this author, Capt. Zeigler wrote, “I knew from September 18, 2001, that the official story about 9/11 was false. That was when I realized that the perpetrators had made a colossal blunder in collapsing the South Tower first, rather than the North Tower, which had been hit more directly and earlier.

“Other anomalies poured in rapidly: the hijackers' names appearing in none of the published flight passenger lists, BBC reports of stolen identities of the alleged hijackers or the alleged hijackers being found alive, the obvious demolitions of WTC 1 and 2 and WTC 7, the lack of identifiable Boeing 757 wreckage at the Pentagon, the impossibility of ordinary cell phone (as opposed to Airfone) calls being made consistently from passenger aircraft at cruising altitude, etc., etc., etc.”

Shortly after the release of the 9/11 Commission Report, a group of over 100 prominent Americans signed a petition urging Congress to immediately reinvestigate 9/11. In addition to two former senior CIA officials and several U.S. State Department veterans, the signers included Lt. Col. Robert Bowman and Capt. Eric H. May, both mentioned above.

The petition stated, in part, “We want truthful answers to questions such as:

1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?

2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?

3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?

4. Why hasn't a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?

5. Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?”

These questions and many others still remain unanswered three years after the petition was submitted and six years after the terrible events of 9/11. As the statements of these twenty-five former U.S. military officers demonstrate, the need for a new thorough, and independent investigation of 9/11 is not a matter of partisan politics, nor the demand of irresponsible, deranged, or disloyal Americans. It is instead a matter of the utmost importance for America’s security and the future of the entire world.

CORRS guitarist Jim Corr has claimed that there was overwhelming evidence that the 9/11 attacks in America were carried out by "rogue elements" of US President George Bush's "neo-con administration".

In a rare intervention into the political arena, the male singer with The Corrs band came out against the Lisbon Treaty claiming that it is "tip-toe totalitarianism in the West".

In an interview with Matt Cooper on Today FM's 'Last Word', Corr made the case for voting 'No' to Lisbon, claiming it could introduce the death penalty to Ireland and contribute to a "new world order".

Corr's opposition is based on his three years "studying the New World Order which the European Union is a part of".

He said "the EU is a stepping stone towards a world government, they will merge it with the Asia Pacific Union, the African Union and the North American Union". The Lisbon Treaty itself will introduce "a scientific technocracy" to Europe which will erode national sovereignty.

Corr claimed that The Charter of Fundamental Rights allows for the introduction of the death penalty.

"It makes provision for the introduction to law for the death penalty in times of war or imminent threat of war.

"What we are seeing is tip-toe totalitarianism in the West with 9/11 the key to understanding this.

"When you study 9/11 it becomes very apparent... it was a staged terrorist attack, what they call a false flag operation."

Act now to stop the worst vaccine law ever proposed in New York since the invention of the mandatory schedule. Assembly Bill 10942 would make all vaccines recommended by the CDC mandatory for all children to attend school and, and for the first time vaccines would become mandatory for infants and toddlers.

The bill was introduced in Rules Committee at the request of Richard Daines, the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Health. The Rules Committee in the personal committee of the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan).

A-CHAMP is calling for rejection of this bill and is demanding the passage of A5468/S3031, a bill that would give individuals a right to a philosophical exemption from vaccine mandates. This is no time to transfer vaccine decisions away from individuals and elected officials answerable to the voters and give it to obscure bureaucrats with financial ties to the vaccine industry.

Here are a few features of the proposed bill:

* Our elected New York representatives would no longer determine the mandatory schedule of vaccines to attend school; decisions made by the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices would automatically become mandatory.

* All children, infants and toddlers included, in New York would be required to get all vaccines recommended by the ACIP according to the ACIP schedule

* All children in New York up to age 18 would be required to get annual flu shots.

* All girls in New York would be required to get a human papilloma virus shot.

* All junior high school children and college students would be required to get meningococcal shots.

* Doctors would be required to issue certificates for every shot given and parents would be required to maintain the records and provide them to school and other authorities.

* The rules committee claims that the new laws would have no fiscal impact on the state despite the necessity of the state to spend tens of millions on purchasing new vaccines, a vast increase in mandatory record keeping and enforcement for schools, and a huge increase that could be expected in the number of cases of neurological damage, Guillian Barré syndrome and other vaccine-caused injuries.

We only have a few weeks to defeat this bill. Let your Assemblymember and State Senator know immediately that a vote for this bill guarantees that you will do everything you can to get them un- elected. In addition to emailing and calling your local representatives, please call Speaker Sheldon Silver and let his staff know, politely, that this is a disastrous idea. While you are at it please call Governor David Paterson and let his staff know, politely, that this is a horrible law.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

dont let the mainstream radio and t.v. fool you with all the madness they show you.This artform is way deeper than just the latest gun-totin rapper speakin on how much "gwop" he got...Blendz

“Hip-Hop has different elements dealing with music, rap, graffiti art, b-boys (what you call break boys)… and also dealing with culture, and a whole movement dealing with wisdom and understanding, as well as peace unity and fun." - Afrika Bambaataa

"Hip-Hop is more than music. Hip-Hop has crossed cultural boundaries that other music genres never crossed. Hip-Hop is not only the music you listen to, but the way you walk, talk, dress and act. Hip-Hop is a state of mind. An entire generation, thirty years strong. We are the Hip-Hop generation. Rap is what we do. Hip-Hop is how we live!" - KRS One

The Original Voice of the GhettoIn an era long before, Curtis and Kanye sat atop, what is today referred to 'hip-hop' bickering over record sales, long before Def Jam and Death Row introduced the world, and well before Queens and South Bronx sized each other up for the inter-borough 'Roxanne Wars' there was hip-hop. It stood as a culture, a code of ethics and way of life in the shadows of the mainstream. Even before a Jamaican legend plugged in his Herculoids on Sedgwick and Cedar and warlord Bambaataa turned gangs into entertainers, there was hip-hop, although at least now we're getting warmer. Like an 'Omerta' within a punk and disco scene an almost secret society breathed silently underground throughout the five points of New York. A generation of aerosol artists scrawled their identities and turf in a format recognisable only unto themselves, gangs roamed within and without these limits bound by honour and code. They spoke in their own language, dressed in stylised uniforms and gate-crashed parties to battle crews in careful choreography. This was unknown by most and unappreciated by anyone outside their culture. It would take over the globe, encompassing race, religion and region through four main elements. This was hip-hop, and we live and die for it!

The way you walk, the way you talk and the way you dress, and being real carried hip-hop. This ran through the truest essence of it's culture. Freedom fighters fought for civil rights for their offspring who evolved with their brand of urban civilisation. They in turn inevitably exercised these rights and freedoms to be who the fuck they wanted to be! The power and responsibility commanded by the hip-hop industry today had no place in the four main elements that were bound together to create a way out for a damned generation otherwise trapped in a perpetual cycle of ghetto irrelevance. This was a chance to escape the pressures of economic struggle and authority and stand alongside those of the same concerns and express themselves at any throw-down in the neighbourhood. In New York's Bronx during the early 1970's a rose grew from concrete, the “Boogie-Down” Bronx was ablaze with enthusiasm behind every struggle. This is where we begin our journey to the biggest phenomenon in today's popular culture.

“B-Boying is the bastard child of hip-hop, graffiti is the black sheep, DJing is the obedient child that always does what it's told. And rap is the spoiled brat who is actually the youngest of the four." - Robert 'Crazy Legs' Colon

Early hip-hop was a cultural evolution germinated from four elements which held strong the same beliefs of freedoms and expression. Graffiti, deejays, b-boys and emcees make for the cornerstone of a legacy. Like Crazy Legs quoted, the MC was the brat of the family and not seen till later in the development, although today they are rewarded with all the credit of hip-hop over the other three components. Evolution has it's own way of developing, regardless. The original “Voice of The Ghetto” before the deejay and emcee took the mic and turned up the volume, graffiti started as one of the very first expressive movements of ghetto youths and gave artists the impression of New York boroughs as one big free vacant canvas on which to bring both colour and emotion to. Modern graffiti pre-dates the hip-hop culture by over a decade, but still carries the same purpose and unwritten code. Adolescents confused with a broken compass of direction or identity and armed with an ethos of anti-everything brazenly formed posses, clicks or even street gangs. They started “tagging” on playground walls marking the dawn of an era within the emerging cook pot of the Boogie-Down borough to “bombing” on the New York transit authority rail. The youth trapped in a sub-culture of an anti-establishment punk rock had yet another way to define themselves in a muddled quest for fame and notoriety. Before every teenager was a DJ or MC rockin’ small park jams and house parties, and sporting fresh Adidas kicks and Kangol hats cutting up the floor with raw spasmodic dance routines in the break of a song, punk kids were expressing themselves by way of aerosol art. You were down with the scene, doing it your way. Though many of New York's residents found this offensive and were not appreciative of this expressive art and pigeon-holed this simply as vandalism, this adversary only made it stronger and the birth of graffiti took New York by stranglehold.

Fort Detrick Scientists Themselves Think the Killer Anthrax Came from their Facility

Even experts at the U.S. bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick think that the anthrax which was used in the 2001 attacks came from their facility:

"In an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

"Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"Indeed, 3 of the 4 suspects the FBI is investigating are employees of Fort Detrick, which is run by the Army.

This new information verifies that the anthrax came from the Fort Detrick military base.

Some people are pretending that someone unconnected with the army bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick stole the anthrax. However, as the above-quoted article states:

"Fort Detrick is run by the United States Army. It's the most secure biological warfare research center in the United States," a bioterrorism expert told FOX News."It is not very likely that someone could steal anthrax from the most secure facility in the U.S., run by the Army.

Indeed, the FBI apparently knew in 2002 who mailed the anthrax letters.

And yet government investigators and prosecutors have covered up and refused to disclose who did it for 6 years. Initially, the FBI tried to frame an innocent man for the attacks.

More importantly, "The FBI has completely shut Congress out of its now five-year investigation into anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill and around the nation". In other words, Congress -- which legally has every right to know what really happened, and which was the main victim of the attack -- is being kept in the dark. If the FBI really didn't know who did it, and was really conducting an honest investigation, why would it stonewall Congress?

There is strong evidence that the anthrax attacks were a false flag attack. Indeed, the bioweapons expert who actually drafted the current bioweapons law (the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989) while working for President George H.W. Bush has said that he is convinced the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.

At the very least, the FBI and the White House are actively covering up for the person who really did it.

On Wednesday night, CNN's Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters "dropped the ball" during the run-up to war.

But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives — presumably at ABC News, where she'd worked from July 2003 to August 2007 — actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration. [UPDATE: Yellin now says it was MSNBC execs, not ABC]

"The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings," Yellin said.

"And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president's approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time...."

But then a shocked Cooper jumped in, asking, "You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?"

"Not in that exact.... They wouldn't say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces," Yellin said. "They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical, and try to put on pieces that were more positive. Yes, that was my experience."

UPDATE: TVNewser reports that Jessica Yellin is going to post a blog item shortly on CNN.com that will clarify her remarks. From what I'm hearing, she'll write that it was MSNBC execs, not ABC that she was referring to last night. Yellin worked at MSNBC during the run-up to war, but then moved on to ABC that summer, where she stayed for four years. UPDATE 2: Yellin confirms this.

AL-AQABA, West Bank (AFP) — Salim Hamed Jaber, 85, shook his head angrily as he recounted how an Israeli soldier drove up to his impoverished household in the occupied West Bank to deliver a demolition order.

"Living under the occupation is like having a piece of glass in your throat," said Jaber.

According to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), "more than 3,000 Palestinian-owned structures in the West Bank have pending demolition orders, which can be immediately executed without prior warning".

Most of the orders were issued because there were no construction permits, which Israeli authorities only seldom grant to Palestinians, the UN agency said, adding that in some cases entire communities could be displaced.

"This is occupation, this is injustice," said Jaber.

And he cannot understand why anyone would want to demolish his home -- a four-room brick and corrugated iron shack in the dusty, sun-baked village of Al-Aqaba.

Villagers say Israeli troops have told them they need the area for military training, because the landscape resembles southern Lebanon, where Israel fought a 34-day war against the Shiite Hezbollah militant group in 2006.

Al-Aqaba, population 300, is one of several West Bank communities that could be wiped off the map if the demolition orders are carried out.

Villagers and UN officials say 35 of the 45 structures in town are under demolition orders, including the kindergarten, the school and the clinic -- which were all built with foreign aid -- as well as the mosque.

Foreign donors, which include Britain, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Norway and the United States, have become key allies in the village's battle to survive.

UN officials say the small village received a total of 819,000 dollars in international aid since 1999.

"Some donors say that if the demolition goes ahead, they would rebuild," said Mayor Sami Sadr.

His office is a bench set in the shade of a carob tree. A sign proclaims: "Village Council. Welcome to Al-Aqaba."

"Donors see that the people of Al-Aqaba have the right to be here," said the mayor.

Having lost an appeal to the Israeli High Court, Sadr now plans to travel to Washington next month to take his case to the US Congress.

At least nine more communities throughout the West Bank are also at risk of being almost entirely displaced because of demolition orders, OCHA said in a report published on Tuesday.

The threatened buildings are located in so-called Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank, is home to 70,000 of the 2.3 million West Bank Palestinians and is under full Israeli control.

More than 94 percent of applications for building permits in Area C submitted by Palestinians between January 2000 and September 2007 were denied, according to official data.

"The denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a 'silent transfer' of the Palestinian population from Area C," the Israeli Peace Now human rights group said in a recent report.

In the first quarter of 2008, Israeli authorities demolished 124 structures as compared with 107 for the whole of 2007, leading to the displacement of 435 Palestinians, 135 of them children, OCHA said.

"Children are frequently disproportionately affected by the demolition of their homes and the subsequent displacement of their families," the study said.

At the small aid-financed kindergarten in Al-Aqaba, the sound of children's laughter fills the air. But even the little ones worry, said Sadr. "They ask their teacher: 'When are they coming to demolish our homes?'"

The 58-year-old mayor said he was severely wounded by bullets fired during an Israeli military exercise when he was working in his family fields at the age of 16.

He has been wheelchair-bound ever since, but said he is determined he and his village will stay. "We will continue building. We have no alternative. It is our land."

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man suing the Secret Service for racial discrimination has sent offensive e-mails of his own, according to new evidence filed in court.

The court documents include e-mails sent by plaintiff Reginald Moore, who is black, containing a joke about a black woman hitting her daughter and a picture of a wedding reception at a White Castle hamburger restaurant. The Secret Service declined to talk about the recent filings.

This is the latest twist in an eight-year-old racial discrimination case against the Secret Service. A group of black employees say the agency has passed over black agents for promotion. They say white colleagues and supervisors regularly use a racial epithet to refer to criminal suspects and black leaders of other countries. The lawsuit claims the Secret Service has always had a discriminatory culture — a claim the agency has consistently denied.

Last month an employee found a noose in one of the Secret Service's training centers. A worker who tied the noose out of canine training rope has since been placed on administrative leave, according to the agency.

As part of the discrimination lawsuit, the Secret Service was ordered to turn over evidence. The agency paid an outside auditor more than $2 million to search 20 million e-mails and other electronic documents dating back 16 years.

Among the 10 e-mails submitted to the court earlier this month in a separate filing were jokes circulated within the agency that referred to: the way a "20-year-old 5th grader" in Harlem spoke; assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and the work ethic of a black golf caddy.

One of the e-mails was sent by a deputy assistant director, who has since been suspended. In addition, one of the supervisors who sent an e-mail was on Sen. Barack Obama's security detail for the past year. The supervisor is no longer on the security detail and has been promoted to a position at the agency's Washington headquarters.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington in 2000. Lawyers say the Secret Service has delayed turning over evidence in the case. They are scheduled to argue that issue in court Thursday.

In 2007, 80 percent of the people who worked at the Secret Service were white, and 10 percent were black, according to data obtained by The Associated Press. The remaining 10 percent were of other races. In the agency's senior leadership, whites made up about 75 percent and blacks 13 percent. Blacks make up about 12 percent of the United States' population.

The Secret Service investigates counterfeiting cases and protects presidents, vice presidents, their family members and other dignitaries. The agency, previously part of the Treasury Department, became part of the Homeland Security Department in 2002.

From: http://www.BrasscheckTV.com Were you ever curious about why Karl Rove resigned so suddenly? Alberto Gonzales, Bush buddy and Attorney General who made torture as American as apple pie, resigned around the same time. The two events may be connected. You see, Mr. Rove appears to have been involved in a felony called election fraud. And to pull it off, he may have had help from Alberto Gonzalez. Remember all those federal prosectutors who Gonzales fired and replaced with Bush-friendly crooks? You know why removing them was so important? They were standing in the way of Rove's scheme. When this news broke it was on the front page of every newspaper in the world - except in the United States. From a talk by investigative reporter Greg Palast

"We don't know if it was a rocket or what," she said. "We will interview everyone and determine the validity of what was seen."

Continental Airlines spokeswoman Kelly Cripe would not discuss what crew members saw.

Model rockets can reach as high as 40,000 feet, although enthusiasts are supposed to notify the FAA if a rocket is entering controlled airspace, said Robert Morehead of the Amateur Spaceflight Association in Houston. See also my other post:http://djblendz.blogspot.com/2008/05/britains-ufo-files.html

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.

Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’.

During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.

Weather-modification, according to the US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report, ‘offers the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary’, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes: ‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.’

In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.’ It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing – through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’

While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo. Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.

The HAARP Programme

Established in 1992, HAARP, based in Gokona, Alaska, is an array of high-powered antennas that transmit, through high-frequency radio waves, massive amounts of energy into the ionosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere). Their construction was funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Operated jointly by the Air Force Research Laboratory and the Office of Naval Research, HAARP constitutes a system of powerful antennas capable of creating ‘controlled local modifications of the ionosphere’. According to its official website, www.haarp.alaska.edu, HAARP will be used ‘to induce a small, localized change in ionospheric temperature so physical reactions can be studied by other instruments located either at or close to the HAARP site’.

But Rosalie Bertell, president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health, says HAARP operates as ‘a gigantic heater that can cause major disruptions in the ionosphere, creating not just holes, but long incisions in the protective layer that keeps deadly radiation from bombarding the planet’. Physicist Dr Bernard Eastlund called it ‘the largest ionospheric heater ever built’.

HAARP is presented by the US Air Force as a research programme, but military documents confirm its main objective is to ‘induce ionospheric modifications’ with a view to altering weather patterns and disrupting communications and radar. According to a report by the Russian State Duma: ‘The US plans to carry out large-scale experiments under the HAARP programme [and] create weapons capable of breaking radio communication lines and equipment installed on spaceships and rockets, provoke serious accidents in electricity networks and in oil and gas pipelines, and have a negative impact on the mental health of entire regions.’

An analysis of statements emanating from the US Air Force points to the unthinkable: the covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.

Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be directed against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’ without their knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries.

HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-American partnership between Raytheon Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents, and British Aerospace Systems (BAES). The HAARP project is one among several collaborative ventures in advanced weapons systems between the two defence giants.

The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents) was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994.

E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest intelligence contractors in the World.

BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research. The installation of 132 highfrequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.

The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.

Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate ‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change’. This mandate includes environmental warfare. ‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists.

‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

But he writes that he later was told that “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed.”

“One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term,” he writes. “And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

McClellan, who turned 40 in February, was press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. An Austin native from a political family, he began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Gov. Bush in early 1999, was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and was chief deputy to Press Secretary Ari Fleischer at the beginning of Bush’s first term.

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

In a small sign of how thoroughly McClellan has adopted the outsider’s role, he refers at times to his former boss as “Bush,” when he is universally referred to by insiders as “the president.”

McClellan lost some of his former friends in the administration last November when his publisher released an excerpt from the book that appeared to accuse Bush of participating in the cover-up of the Plame leak. The book, however, makes clear that McClellan believes Bush was also a victim of misinformation.

The book begins with McClellan’s statement to the press that he had talked with Rove and Libby and that they had assured him they “were not involved in … the leaking of classified information.”

At Libby’s trial, testimony showed the two had talked with reporters about the officer, however elliptically.

“I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood,” McClellan writes. “It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. I didn’t learn that what I’d said was untrue until the media began to figure it out almost two years later.

“Neither, I believe, did President Bush. He, too, had been deceived and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”

McClellan also suggests that Libby and Rove secretly colluded to get their stories straight at a time when federal investigators were hot on the Plame case.

“There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” he writes. “It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. … Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], … Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.

“I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. … At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. …

“The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. … I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Decrying the Bush administration’s “excessive embrace of the permanent campaign approach to governance,” McClellan recommends that future presidents appoint a “deputy chief of staff for governing” who “would be responsible for making sure the president is continually and consistently committed to a high level of openness and forthrightness and transcending partisanship to achieve unity.

“I frequently stumbled along the way,” McClellan acknowledges in the book’s preface. “My own story, however, is of small importance in the broad historical picture. More significant is the larger story in which I played a minor role: the story of how the presidency of George W. Bush veered terribly off course.”

Even some of the chapter titles are brutal: “The Permanent Campaign,” “Deniability,” “Triumph and Illusion,” “Revelation and Humiliation” and “Out of Touch.”

“I think the concern about liberal bias helps to explain the tendency of the Bush team to build walls against the media,” McClellan writes in a chapter in which he says he dealt “happily enough” with liberal reporters. “Unfortunately, the press secretary at times found himself outside those walls as well.”

The book’s center has eight slick pages with 19 photos, eight of them depicting McClellan with the president. Those making cameos include Cheney, Rove, Bartlett, Mark Knoller of CBS News, former Assistant Press Secretary Reed Dickens and, aboard Air Force One, former press office official Peter Watkins and former White House stenographer Greg North.

In the acknowledgments, McClellan thanks each member of his former staff by name.

Among other notable passages:

• Steve Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, said about the erroneous assertion about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium, included in the State of the Union address of 2003: “Signing off on these facts is my responsibility. … And in this case, I blew it. I think the only solution is for me to resign.” The offer “was rejected almost out of hand by others present,” McClellan writes.

• Bush was “clearly irritated, … steamed,” when McClellan informed him that chief economic adviser Larry Lindsey had told The Wall Street Journal that a possible war in Iraq could cost from $100 billion to $200 billion: “‘It’s unacceptable,’ Bush continued, his voice rising. ‘He shouldn’t be talking about that.’”

• “As press secretary, I spent countless hours defending the administration from the podium in the White House briefing room. Although the things I said then were sincere, I have since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

• “History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

• McClellan describes his preparation for briefing reporters during the Plame frenzy: “I could feel the adrenaline flowing as I gave the go-ahead for Josh Deckard, one of my hard-working, underpaid press office staff, … to give the two-minute warning so the networks could prepare to switch to live coverage the moment I stepped into the briefing room.”

• “‘Matrix’ was the code name the Secret Service used for the White House press secretary."

McClellan is on the lecture circuit and remains in the Washington area with his wife, Jill.

Both Clinton and Bush exploited bombings within first year of taking office, Obama or McCain likely to enjoy the same opportunity

Paul Joseph Watson / Prison Planet | May 27, 2008

National intelligence spooks are all but promising that history will be repeated for a third time running, and the new President of the United States - likely Barack Obama or John McCain - will be welcomed into office by a terror attack that will occur within the first year of his tenure.

"When the next president takes office in January, he or she will likely receive an intelligence brief warning that Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America, intelligence experts say," according to a report in the Washington Times.

"Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, in Mr. Clinton’s second month as president. Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks came in the Bush presidency’s first year….The pattern is clear to some national security experts. Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack."

Naturally, the Washington Times article makes out as if a terror attack within the early stages of a new presidency is a bad thing, but both Clinton and Bush exploited terror in America to realize preconceived domestic and geopolitical agendas.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an inside job from start to finish - it did not come as a "surprise" to the U.S. government since they ran the entire operation, having cooked the bomb for the "Islamic terrorists" that they had groomed for the attack.

In 1993 the FBI planted their informant, Emad A. Salem, within a radical Arab group in New York led by Ramzi Yousef. Salem was ordered to encourage the group to carry out a bombing targeting the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Under the illusion that the project was a sting operation, Salem asked the FBI for harmless dummy explosives which he would use to assemble the bomb and then pass on to the group. At this point the FBI cut Salem out of the loop and provided the group with real explosives, leading to the attack on February 26 that killed six and injured over a thousand people. The FBI’s failure to prevent the bombing was reported on by the New York Times in October 1993.

The attack, coupled with the Oklahoma City bombing less than two years later, enabled Bill Clinton to whip up support for the passage of a plethora of unconstitutional legislation, including the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Brady Bill, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and a $100 million dollar grant to Israel for "counter-terrorism" purposes.

By the time Clinton left office, the Patriot movement - which before the OKC bombing had grown in leaps and bounds, spurred on by the atrocities committed by the federal government at Waco - was effectively dead.

Few need reminding of George W. Bush’s agenda before he took office. The ideological framework that would shape his presidency - encapsulated by the goals of the Neo-Con Project For a New American Century - required a "new Pearl Harbor" to get things started, which is exactly what they received on September 11, 2001.

Furthermore, the attacks enabled Bush to pursue an invasion of Iraq that he had dreamed of achieving as early as 1999, according to the ghostwriter of Bush’s autobiography Mickey Herskowitz.

"One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade—if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency," Bush told Herskowitz.

That "chance to invade" arrived on the morning of 9/11, within hours of which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "Was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks."

A Congressional Research Service report last month stated, "Whether an incident of national security significance occurs just before or soon after the presidential transition, the actions or inactions of the outgoing administration may have a long-lasting effect on the new president’s ability to effectively safeguard U.S. interests and may affect the legacy of the outgoing president."

The government seems pretty certain that McCain or Obama will be presented with a terror attack early on in their presidency and is giving them ample time to prepare the best method of exploiting it, but only to "safeguard U.S. interests," naturally.

The pattern is clear - each time a new President takes office they have a mandate to act as a torch bearer for the same agenda - domestic repression and foreign invasion. A terror attack provides the perfect pretext to realize those goals.

Whether it be Barack Obama or John McCain, we can expect a new crisis to conveniently arrive shortly after they take office, enabling them to pursue the same tyrannical blueprint followed by their predecessors.

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Connecting the dots between different events that go unreported (or under-reported), as a whole, in our mainstream media. Come learn what many do not know, but what many are waking up to. Knowledge is power.